Tag: Internet

Categories
crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom government transparency ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

No Joking Matter

encryption, freedom, Chen Sho Uli, China, Chinese, Orwell, repression

He thought he was just horsing around.

Using the popular app WeChat, a Chinese construction worker supervisor Chen Sho Uli made a gossipy joke about government officials while chatting in a chat group. But being too casual about what you say — and where — can be dangerous in China. For his sin Chen was incarcerated for several days. 

“Picking quarrels” is another no-​no in the country.

In lieu of Orwell’s telescreen in every room, modern Internet technology enables repressive governments to punish citizens for thoughtcrime that becomes app-​speech crime. If the Chinese government can spy on you, it will. And penalize you for remarks it deems offensive to the dignity of the state.

Because of such repression, blogger Stephen Green observes that “strong encryption is everybody’s friend — except the tyrant’s.”

Agreed. Encryption is an important line of defense. 

But some societies require this more than others, because harmless, incidental communications are not equally attacked by government, from country to country. Which means that encryption is actually a second line of defense. 

The first is a cultural and political tradition respecting individual rights.

For one thing, robust encryption helps only those who engage in hyper-​careful private discourse, or hyper-​careful anonymous public discourse. Encryption won’t help thinkers of controversial thoughts who wish to express those thoughts publicly and under their own name. Everywhere we can, then, we must strengthen both the technological and cultural defenses of open discourse — recognizing that the latter is the more crucial and fundamental.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

The Owners of Twitter Have Rights

Twitter, freedom, social media, bluebird, government, internet, speech

Roger Stone is suing Twitter for kicking him out. 

Without saying exactly why they booted him, Twitter implies that the reason is abusive language. For his part, Stone accuses the social media giant of targeting right-​wing tweeters while letting left-​wing tweeters off the hook for the same or worse alleged wrongdoing. 

I’ll stipulate that Stone is justified in accusing Twitter of rank, ideologically motivated hypocrisy in applying its micro-​blog policies. But he’s wrong to sue.

As I have argued before — indeed, just yesterday — government should not regulate Internet forums and should not compel Twitter or other firms to provide a soapbox for anybody else. The only relevant legal issue here is whether Twitter has violated a contract. But Twitter does not agree to let anyone use its services unconditionally. And I don’t think that Stone is alleging any violation of contract. 

Our right to freedom of speech does not include the right to force others to give us access to their property in order to exercise that freedom. Nor do the rights of any individuals to use and dispose of their own property disappear if they happen to create a very big and successful enterprise. There are many ways to try to make Twitter pay for bad policies without using force against the company, including boycott and direct competition.

I agree with the guy who said that one’s right to freedom is not contingent upon a guarantee “that one will always do the right thing as others see it.” 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Photo by Nigel on Flickr

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

Another Push for Censorship

Great Britain, Tory, Prime Minister, PM, censorship, terrorism, internet, web

It’s almost as if politicians are hell-​bent on expanding government at the expense of our freedoms … and grandstanding to ‘look like they are doing something.’

The two proclivities are not unrelated.

Take Theresa May, Great Britain’s Tory Prime Minister. After yet another terrorist attack in her country, this time on the London Bridge, she re-​iterated her party’s intent to censor the Internet.

“We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” May said on Sunday. But this “safe space,” she went on, “is precisely what the Internet, and the big companies that provide Internet-​based services, provide.”

Now, blaming ISPs and social platforms is a crude form of business scapegoating — something I would expect from her opponent in the upcoming elections, Jeremy Corbyn, the much-​loathed (but inching ahead in the polls) top banana of Labour. 

As a conservative, May should understand markets and the limitations of government interventionism a bit better than a near-communist. She might recall that previous attempts to regulate the means of communication almost never to work, and, in those few cases when they do, never stay scaled to the original target issue. 

They expand. To cover more than just terrorism, as in this case.

What’s more, Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group makes the case that such a move would likely “push these vile networks into even darker corners of the web, where they will be even harder to observe” — scuttling the alleged purpose of the Conservative Party’s longed-​for censorship. 

May knows this. But she is a politician. She has power, and she wants to keep it.

It’s almost as if power corrupts or something.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

 

Categories
general freedom media and media people responsibility

Less Innocent Times?

Dan Balz, Term Limits, coffee, internet, media, web, trust

Many years ago, waiting for coffee at a vendor in front of the Washington Post building and across the street from my U.S. Term Limits office, I often exchanged friendly banter with the Post’s Dan Balz. 

Coffee in hand last Sunday, I read Balz’s column, “A scholar asks, ‘Can democracy survive the Internet?’”

“In more innocent times, the rise of the Internet was seen by many people as a boon to democracy,” Balz began, adding that “the Web broadened the flow of information, introduced new voices into the political debates, empowered citizens and even provided a powerful fundraising tool for some lesser-​known candidates such as Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.”

Obama, Sanders … all to the good!

“Now, in what are clearly less innocent times, the Internet is viewed as a far less benign force,” he continues, next to a picture of President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed.  “It can be a haven for spreading fake news and rewarding the harshest and most divisive of political rhetoric.”

Mr. Balz’s time continuum is faulty. The “innocent times” when Bernie Sanders used the Internet to raise money were the same “clearly less innocent” times when voters elected President Trump. 

“Neither the legacy media nor the established political parties,” Balz bemoans, “exercise the power they once had as referees.”

Nathaniel Persily, the scholar cited by our legacy-​media columnist, shares Balz’s anti-​Trump bias. But he makes an important point, writing that the Trump campaign “could only be successful because established institutions — especially the mainstream media and political party organizations — had already lost most of their power.”

People voted against the less-​than-​innocent political (and media) establishment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

 

Illustration based on original artwork by PRO With Associates

 

Categories
Common Sense crime and punishment folly general freedom media and media people too much government

At Least We’re Not Turkey

Merve Büyüksaraç

Whenever I feel discouraged by the steady drumbeat of domestic assaults on liberty — from Obamacare to parents being accused of “child neglect” for letting their kids return from a playground by themselves — I try to remind myself:

Things Could Be Worse.

World history provides plenty of support for this dictum, but so does a glance at the newspaper. Like the story of how a single satiric Instagram post “could end up sending a former Miss Turkey to jail.”

An Istanbul prosecutor has been threatening to imprison Merve Büyüksaraç for up to two years for the heinous deed of insulting an official. Last summer she excerpted a satirical piece called “The Master’s Poem” that originally appeared in the magazine Uykusuz. Uykusuz has a habit of mocking Turkish politicians, including President Erdoğan.

“I shared it because it was funny to me,” she says. “I did not intend to insult Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.” Regardless of her motive, her post should not have put her at legal risk.

Buyuksarac is popular on social media — 15,000 followers on Instagram, double that on Twitter — a presence that makes her a target. The Turkish government doesn’t care whether she is an ardent dissident. They obviously just want to intimidate others with a readership who are inclined to ruffle the feathers of the powerful even a little.

So yes, things could be worse. Lots worse. They could also be a lot better. That’s what we have to fight for.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Categories
folly general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Non-​neutral Net Neutrality

Worried about its costs, Netflix has asked millions of customers to support so-​called “net neutrality” policies to curtail the freedom of action of broadband companies like Comcast. Netflix, a huge suck of bandwidth, doesn’t want to have to make deals with ISPs like Comcast to deliver service to its customers.

One goal of “net neutrality” is to prevent Internet providers from affecting Internet access via such nefarious practices as charging different rates for different levels of service (a ubiquitous form of “discrimination” without which markets cannot function). Mises Institute writer Ryan McMaken wants to know what problem the new regulations are supposed to solve: “Who is being denied access to the web?”

Since the Internet first became generally available, it has become only more widespread, service only faster.

Any problems caused by existing government barriers to entry should be solved by dismantling those barriers. But according to FCC commissioner Ajit Pai, the voluminous new regulations go in the opposite direction, giving the agency “power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works.”

The FCC has voted to proceed with the regulations. The result will likely throttle the quality of broadband service. 

Netflix and other advocates of the regime have also foot-​shootingly increased the chances of intrusive new regulations of their own net-​based businesses.

Any sweeping assault on our liberty is hardly “neutral.” Regulations like those proposed always favor some over others, the essence of partiality. What we need from government is not “neutrality” with respect to our freedom, but consistent upholding of our right to it. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Categories
video

Video: Instead of Internet Neutrality

Big moves and much talk about net neutrality in recent days. If your head is swimming, maybe try these two videos from Reason TV:

Categories
folly meme

Net Neutrality Lunacy

“The very same government that couldn’t even build a functional website and leaked massive amounts of personal data while doing it just took over the entire Internet.

And people everywhere are telling me that places like Amazon (a company that can deliver almost anything to my door within 24 hours with the click of a button) are making the Internet less free.

Raving, barking lunatics.”

—Justin M. Stoddard

Get a high-​resolution screensaver of this image. Click on the image below to open large version that you can download.

netNeutralityLunaticsb

Categories
free trade & free markets

A Ride on the Private Side

If you’d like to catch a flight without the usual delays and post-​911 regulation-​inflicted hassles, used to be you had to own your own plane, charter one, or buy a time share in one.

Now you can use a smartphone app to book a seat on a private jet — just as you use an app to book an Uber driver outside the confines of the hyper-​regulated taxi industry. Sure, private-​jet seats are still pricey. But the New York Times reports that lower-​end bookings are comparable in price to that of first-​class seats on Delta or American.

Private JetNew services find spots for you on planes en route to pick somebody up that would otherwise be empty, or let you subscribe to blocks of time for use on a variety of jets. Result? More and more passengers are able to ride private jets thanks to startups like JetSmarter and Magellan Jets.

Those of us who lack the means to exploit this option-​expanding development should still welcome it as a step in the right direction, away from burdensome regulatory regimes that slow us all down. I doubt we’ll get rid of the regulatory bog at the airport any time soon. After all, we’re still stuck with the government-​subsidized USPS postal monopoly despite the competition in package delivery provided by UPS and FedEx.

But without the pressure and example of such relatively unencumbered alternatives, our situation would be worse; our prospects, dimmer.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture responsibility

Custom and Customers

Muncie’s Traci Markcum remembers when the news was free. The Indiana citizen wants a return to those carefree days.

“I think it is pretty bad The Star Press is trying to charge people to read the paper online,” she wrote in a letter to the editor. “Whatever happened to being able to see the news on the Web for free?”

Free? Well, you can find plenty of news on the internet for free, sorta, once you’ve bought a computer and Internet access — and paid the electric bill, of course. In the really olden days, before cable TV, network news was free once you had a TV set. (Why computer and television manufacturers, internet providers and electric companies dare to charge us money, when we’re simply being good citizens and keeping up on current affairs, I’ll never know.)

Ms. Markcum “used to buy the Sunday paper and would read the news at work or on the go on [her] phone, but not now.” Not now, because The Star Press has “stooped to a new low by having to charge Muncie citizens who live and work in the city a fee to read something. Your paper prices have increased and people cannot afford to get the paper.”

In fact, Markcum became so desperate, she asked, “Are we supposed to start stealing the news you are supposed to be providing?”

Paperboys beware!

“Go back to the way it used to be, or lose a lot more customers,” she concluded.

Customers? A customer “purchases a commodity or service.”

For its part, The Star Press tells online visitors to “Enjoy a limited number of articles over the next 30 days” offering a button to “Subscribe today for full access.”

Oh, the humanity!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.